In seeking jobs, many potential employees put out information about their qualifications that can be quite exaggerated. This act is likewise performed by those seeking jobs in IT companies. It is therefore imperative that IT companies master the art of hiring people and adequately assessing their skills in order to get the very best of candidates.
For any new recruit to fit into your IT corporation and be productive, they need to possess soft skills. While resumes may sound impressive, assessing a job seeker for soft skills plays a key role in promoting effectiveness in an IT company’s hiring process. This fact is well captured in a statement made by John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology, Menlo Park, California; “Companies want computer programmers who can go to meetings, gather information and talk about what clients want to accomplish. Written and verbal skills are at a premium.”
The challenges of hiring the best suitable candidates grow exponentially for small and medium-size companies that don’t have on-staff IT experts to help assess candidates’ skill sets. Fortunately, workarounds exist to help even the most IT challenged companies to find the right hybrid professionals. Below are some helpful suggestions on how to assess the skills of potential employees in your IT company.
Decide what is most important in your Resume search
When looking for hybrid professionals (i.e. those conversant in both business and technology) to hire, you’re likely going to have to focus in one direction or another. It is therefore very important that you decide which is more important in your open position – the MBA or the tech knowledge – and then pick carefully as you search resumes to attract top talent. This helps you to be clear enough on choosing the perfect candidate to fit in the position.
Be very specific during the interview process
Once you’ve narrowed your list of potential employees, your next aim is to get as much detailed information about their experience as you can. Ask detailed interview questions about prior positions, focusing on how they split their time between technical and business tasks.
Check for presentation, communication, and social skills
It is important that you look out for the ability of your job candidates to effectively make presentations, communicate and properly interact with other members of staff in the company.
Trust, but Verify IT skills
Be sure to have a tech person on your staff to do a technical evaluation of the IT skills of your potential employees. If you don’t have the staff to vet job candidates, you can employ the services of Testing companies like Brainbench, ReviewNet Services, and eSkill Corporation.
Hire someone who is experienced
Choose a candidate who has a proven performance record of accomplishing the task you need done and be careful enough not to be too hasty in order not to hire incompetent candidates.
By taking note of the above-given suggestions and putting them to practice, IT companies can be certain of being able to rightly and effectively assess the skills of candidates seeking employment from them and getting the very best of those candidates.